IMPORTANT A/N AND DISCLAIMER:
Hey everyone. Just wanted to pop in at the start and give a quick warning that this chapter has a panic attack/ break down towards the end. It's nothing overly graphic but I didn't not want to mention it.
Sorry for the wait on this chapter. I have been writing future chapters in that time so hopefully waits won't be as long anymore. Also, first time I've written to a specific song for the chapter (Panic Room by Au/Ra).
She was walking up the drive to the boarding house, relieved to be back. It had been a little bit since she'd been here, but it was the exact same as had they'd left it when they initially drove after the X-geeks. From the outside at least, lord know what sort of mess it was inside.
A small smile formed on her lips. Sure, she might tease them, and occasionally they were incredibly annoying, but she had missed their presence for however long she had been away for. She couldn't quite remember.
Those bastards. They'd wormed their way into her heart and now she had emotional attachments.
She was halfway to the door when a voice stopped her in her tracks. "And where do you think you're going?"
Her mouth went dry. "Mystique?"
There she was, leaning against the sign that proclaimed that this building was the boarding house. Her mentor narrowed her yellow hued eyes. "I asked you a question. That was not an answer."
"I-I was heading inside."
"As though you deserve to return here." The woman scoffed.
"What do you mean?" Jacelynn exclaimed.
"It's simple enough, really." She leaned forward, "You failed."
The word pierced her chest. For a second some of her worst fears start flooding into her head, consuming her thoughts. She manages to push them back to get out "Mystique that's insane! We all failed-including Magneto! The X-men won." She spat.
"They might have won, but do not think for a second that we are all equally losers. And you, for example, lost a fight to a girl younger than and you. Not only that but you let yourself become incapacitated with a major injury. You won't be truly back on your feet for weeks." Mystique looked disgusted. "I did not expect to see such a show of weakness from you Jacelynn. Frankly, I am disappointed I ever thought you could be a skilled fighter." The woman turned, and walked past her to get to the front door.
The colour had all but drained away from Jacelynn's face. This couldn't be happening. This can't be happening!
God, she'd really done it this time.
Jacelynn launched forward, gripping Mystiques forearm. "Please, Mystique. I swear on my life that it will never happen again. Give me a second chance, I'll blow all your expectations out of the water!"
The woman sneered, aggressively wrenching her arm out of the younger girl's grasp, intentionally sending the teen to the ground in the process. "Get out of my sight."
She wanted to get up, do something to change Mystiques mind but she couldn't. She physically couldn't. The ground beneath her was sinking, the world getting darker and darker, fading away to black and then…
She woke up with a gasp, eyes flying open. She shot straight up to a sitting position, the pillow she had buried her face into falling off the side of the bed. Her bed, in her room, she told herself, as her heart rate began to slow. That was not pleasant.
"You're up?! Jacelynn I…" his voice fades when she looks up to see Pietro leaning in the doorframe, something that looks like shock on his face.
"I'm not dead," she gives him a wry smile, but her face quickly contorts into something of pain as her head started to pound. "Surprisingly."
"Yeah well you gave us all a good scare. Between the bleeding out, the look on Xaviers face when people finally noticed you were casually dying and the fact no one could understand you half the time was not sending positive signs… How many languages do you know?"
She looked at him, confused."Uh...like four, I think? Why?"
"You not remember?"
She shrugged. "It's all a little hazy if I'm going to be honest."
"Half the time you were trying to talk you were using some mesh of those languages and no one could understand you. Something which you decided to ignore apparently because you would not stop." He dropped down on the edge of her bed. "How much do you remember then?"
She paused, thinking. "I remember the plane crashing into the building and everyone started fighting. Then it's sort of a blur until I woke up under a pile of rocks. And then… I think it was Lance and Fred, they dug me out and then I'm on the plane. Then we were diving down to the ground. Everyone left, and then I was talking… to you right?"
"Bingo. Remember anything else?"
"It goes black after that."
"Well, we talked for a bit. Tried to anyway. You only got really engaged when I asked you if now you'd tell me what your middle name is and you rambled about how middle names are pointless. Before you ask, no, I did not get an answer." She couldn't help but snicker at that. "Then everyone came back onto the plane and people are like 'Hey, is Jacelynn dying?' and I'm like 'Yeah'. Then Xavier said he'll give you medical attention back at the institute and when we land we went to their medical bay. He did some tests and was like 'She has a concussion.' And you, you wonderful human being, looked him dead in the eye and said 'Good fucking thing we have a telepath on hand, we'd never have known if we didn't'."
She barked out a laugh. "I did not!"
"You did, and it was glorious," he affirmed. "It was also like… the last coherent thing you said for a solid hour which makes it even better. Then at one point he kicked us out and did... telepath stuff? I'm not sure, but it helped."
"Wait, I'm sorry. Did you just say you let him mess around with my brain?"
"Yeah?"
If she wasn't awake before, she certainly was now. "Holy shit, why on earth would you-"
"Didn't exactly have many options 'Lynn. Besides, I don't think he like.. messed with your brain. In any bad way, I mean. You don't feel a sudden urge to join the X-Men, right?"
She cracked a smile at that. "Not particularly."
"Feeling like renouncing the ways of pickpocketing poor saps on the streets?"
"Nope."
"Want to cause bodily harm to any of the people under the same roof as you?"
"Not anymore then usual."
"Well there you go. Crisis averted."
"Okay, fine. You have a point."
His eyebrows shot up, a smile on his face. "Woah. I'm so sorry, your head must be really messed up." He cupped an ear and leaned forward. "I don't think I've ever heard you say that before. Wanna repeat it just so I can make sure I'm not hearing things?"
"Oh, fuck off."
His grin only grows bigger. "So you said and meant it. Oh wow, this is a big step forward for the two of us 'Lynn."
"I swear to fucking god if you-"
"Anyway, where were we exactly? Oh right. So he was gone for awhile and we were all awkwardly hovering by the closed door. There was also a pretty steady rotation of Institute people acting guard in case we like... I don't know. Broke something? Tried to sneak around the institute? Plant a bomb? No fucking idea, honestly. I'm pretty sure I had far more important things to be thinking about than future plans to fuck with the X-Men, but whatever."
She sensed an opportunity to get back at him and leapt for it. "Aw," she cooed, smiling, "I'm important to you? Pietro, I had no idea."
One thing to know about Pietro is that even when sitting down, he's always moving. He doesn't just sit, he's always fidgeting or shifting. Came with being a speedster, she had always guessed. But in that second of reaction time she swore she had never seen him so still. "I didn't say that."
"Pretty sure you did."
"Pretty sure I didn't."
"'S alright 'Tro. You can be honest. I happen to share the same opinion, I think I'm pretty damn important too."
"Anyways," he gets out, choosing to ignore her, "Xavier came out and told us that you're gonna be fine in a few days and that we could leave you there and they'd look after you. You were like, half asleep at this point but you were absolutely not for this idea, Lance looked like he'd rather slash the tires of his jeep then leave so here you are." He shrugged. "That's about it."
"Considering I remember… none of that, I'm assuming this is one hell of a concussion."
"Yeah. Apparently the telepathy was supposed to help speed up the recovery, still Xavier said you'd need a few days before you can get up and walk around by yourself." He spared a glance around the room. "We were also supposed to leave you alone in the dark and be super quiet and let you rest. Technically I shouldn't even be in here, I don't think."
"Who cares? I appreciate the company."
The corners of his mouth quirked up "Appreciate? We really are making leaps and bounds today."
"Oh, be quiet." She rolled her eyes, making an unsuccessful attempt to stop a small smile. The low drone of a headache moves from the back of her head to the front as it goes quiet. Her eyes went up to the ceiling, and her mind lead her to the question of how long was it going to be until she was fully recovered? She was no expert on concussions, but she did know they took awhile to fully heal. Which was not a pleasant thought, she couldn't stand the idea of being stuck in her room for ages.
The next thought to fly into her head was it's really quiet in here. "Oh shit, did I force you to actually be quiet? I didn't mean to."
"I didn't notice if you did. It's alright," he replied. The look on his face was… strange. She couldn't quite put her finger on it. He was making eye contact with her, had been almost this whole time but it sort of felt like he was elsewhere at the same time. It unsettled her, for reasons she wasn't sure she could describe, but a small part of her didn't want it to end.
"Hey, are you alright?"
"Yeah, I'm ok. It's just… Uh... Your eyes are really pretty."
For a minute, she didn't get it. She hadn't done anything different to her eyes for her glamour and he'd seen them a thousand times, so why the sudden-
Then it hit her like a brick.
As soon as the realization dawned the absolute panic set in.
"Shit!" She cursed, scrambling, half throwing her blanket off in the process of trying to get to her nightstand.
"Woah, Jacelynn what's wrong?" Worry and confusion blurred his words together more than usual.
She ignored him, yanking open the drawers of her nightstand, not remembering where she had stashed it. It being a handheld mirror she barely touched. It had a large crack down the left hand side but it confirmed what she thought.
She forgot.
There was no glamour.
Her straight black hair, her nose, her mouth, everything screamed her mother. Her bright violet eyes were there worst, glowing more than she had remembered hers or her mothers being. That memory being foggy at best, because Jesus, it had been so long. She wanted to cry. To scream to run to do something.
She wanted to fall back into the safety net that was her glamour, that was the Jacelynn Dionnis of Bayville, a fierce fighter and stone cold bitch who didn't have emotions to speak of. Not this. But she couldn't. She couldn't summon the concentration to bring it back up, not when her mind and her emotions were all over the map. She dropped the mirror and put her head in her hands. "Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck fuck."
"Jacelynn," his voice was slow, cautious, and very, very concerned. "Are you okay?"
"Okay? Okay?! I am not okay I-" Her mind remade the connection that the person who was talking to her, was in the same room, saw her. She jolted from her spot on the farther side of the bed and grabbed his wrist. "Who's been in here?"
"No one. It's just been me, I only came in to make sure you weren't dead."
"You-You can't tell anyone. Okay? You can not tell them what I look like and you can not tell them that you saw me like this. You have to promise."
"Jacelynn, I don't-"
"Pietro, please. Please, you have to promise me."
There was a beat where they could hear a pin drop. "Okay. Okay, I'll promise. I won't breathe a word."
She searched his gaze, looking for any hint that he would go back on his word before releasing her grasp. "Okay. Thank you."
"Look Jacelynn, it was just a compliment, if I had known it-"
"No!" Her voice raised half an octave. "It's not that! It's just that I can see myself like-I-I... It's just-I look like m..." Her voice broke over the last word. The adrenaline rush that had kicked in with her fear had started to fade away. The anxiety replaced with a cold, tired, exhausted, disappointed hollowness inside of her that melded with the pain in her head. She turned away from him, running a hand through her long raven hair. "Please go."
"J-"
"I want to be alone. Please just. Get out. Get out get out get out."
He didn't try to argue this time. If she was looking she'd have seen worry and confusion, a hand reaching out for her shoulder to try and comfort but… Comfort had never exactly been a thing he'd been good at, so he settled for doing as she asked. Within a second he was gone, the door closing behind him.
She slumped back down onto her bed. Pathetic, a voice whispered in the back of her head. What a trainwreck she was. Any other night she might have tried to silence those thoughts, to distract herself to varying degrees of success. But she couldn't even manage that tonight, her mind was too numb. So the little voice went on, speaking nasty truths she didn't want to admit she was. Her head was a wreck. Bitter tasting memories surfaced, swiftly followed by the vile feeling of grief. Then that aforementioned little voice got new ammo to attack her with, and when she was distracted it was so much easier to stumble on those memories and the whole cycle started over again.
God. She wanted this to be over. She wanted to go to sleep. She wanted to be better, to not deal with having episodes like this anymore. She wanted to cry, she wanted to throw up, she wanted to die.
She wanted to not feel so damn weak.